


Better Angels

by Laura Shapiro (laurashapiro)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-03
Updated: 2002-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurashapiro/pseuds/Laura%20Shapiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Leo thinks about when he wants a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Angels

**Author's Note:**

> For tzikeh.
> 
> Special thanks to wearemany for her support, and to Torch for the beta she didn't know she was giving me.

When Leo wants a drink, which is every day of his life, and every hour of every day, he thinks of Jed's hair.

He has no memory of making the call. He remembers driving out to the motel, halfway to New Hampshire, and slouching into the 7-11 across the street. Holing up with the bottle. Why did he go outside? Why didn't he use the hotel room phone?

He can recall digging the phone out of his briefcase, but not the conversation that followed. Thank god for cell phones, newfangled in those days; thank god he hadn't had to struggle in a booth.

Of the intervening time he remembers only the wet pavement against his cheek, the cold seeping through his suit and into his bones, elastic minutes or hours of nausea and self- loathing. He must have closed his eyes for a little while, but it didn't make the night any shorter.

When he opened them again, a familiar figure loomed over him in the darkness, face in shadow, glowing like a supernatural thing. Backlit by the street lamp, the proud head and broad shoulders stood out sharply against the light. Leo blinked.

Jed squatted down next to him on the rain-soaked asphalt, a sheaf of hair falling over his forehead, and it was only then that Leo understood that he wasn't going to die. It was a little disappointing.

Jed was saying something to him, and he sounded upset. Leo wanted to tell him he was okay, he was just fine, but his tongue felt huge and dry. He reached up to brush the hair off Jed's face, his arm weak and shaky. Jed caught his hand and held it, hauled him up and got him somehow into the car. Held his hand all the way back home, driving with one hand and both knees.

Home. Jed and Abby's house, where Jed propped him up in the guest bedroom and Abby gave him aspirin and poured endless glasses of water down his throat. Abby was silent and professional, but she had never been any good at hiding her tears. Jed sat beside the bed and talked for hours about nothing: New Hampshire state tax law, fauna native to Yosemite, the Women's College Basketball Championships. When Leo had to throw up, Jed held his head.

Following his fourth or fifth trip to the bathroom, Leo fell asleep. When he woke up a few hours later, a headache spiked through his right eye and throbbed against his soft palate. He didn't know what day it was. He looked at his watch and saw his bare wrist. He felt in his pockets for his pills and realized he was wearing one of Jed's sweat suits. Jed was gently snoring in the chair next to him, and Abby had left a piece of paper across his knees with the addresses and times of the nearest meetings, written in her fine, clear script. She didn't have a typical doctor's handwriting.

Leo looked over at Jed, clutching his eye as the pain lanced through it. Jed's head was listing to one side. He reached out and stroked Jed's hair from his forehead. Then he got up, put on his filthy suit, and went to find his car. He called Jenny from the road. Her patience galled him. It didn't feel like the right kind of patience.

A few months later he checked into Sierra-Tuscon. He wasn't thinking of his family or his career when he did it.

When Leo wants a drink, which is every single hour of every single day of his life, he thinks of Jed's hair, and of his better angels.

 

END


End file.
